The Baer Facts

Here’s one post that will deal almost strictly with football and not Facebook.
We had our regular weekly meeting with defensive coordinator Kent Baer about this week’s game and he said the big key figures to be how UW’s secondary can match up with WSU’s passing offense.
WSU is second in the conference in passing offense at 253.5 yards per gaame and tied for second in touchdown passes with 21.
The Cougars are probably without their top two receivers, Jason Hill and Michael Bumpus, due to ankle injuries.
Still, Baer said “we’ll see more vertical routes than we’ve seen in the last six weeks combined. … they look a little different when those two guys aren’t playing but they still do a lot of the same things.”
In the good news department for UW, Baer said Jason Wells has been practicing and should be able to play some at free safety this week after missing two games with a knee injury.
“That will help our depth tremendously,” Baer said.
Baer also said that middle linebacker Donald Butler should be back after missing two games with a calf injury.
Interestingly, given all the speculation about how “Senior-gate” impacted the team against Stanford, Baer reiterated that he thought the effort against the Cardinal was “great.”
Baer said he always charts what he calls “loafs” — plays in which it appears a player wasn’t trying as hard as he could have — and said “there were very few, if any.”
He said he was most impressed that UW’s effort stayed strong even after the long TD pass to Richard Sherman early in the fourth quarter made it clear the Huskies were in trouble.
He said he thought UW “played harder, which was pleasing to see.”
In fact, Stanford went three-and-out on its last three series.